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I'm pretty sure the first two are backwards. に is the direction and へ is the definite final location. Ex: 学校に行く - I'm going to (head toward) school (but I may get sidetracked along the way). 学校へ行く - I'm going, and will end up at school and nowhere else
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istrasciJun 1 '11 at 0:18

I'm pretty sure not... But if you can find a grammar somewhere that says that then post it :)
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Nate GlennJun 1 '11 at 1:08

3

I was told まで means "until" and thus would be about the destination...?
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hippietrailJun 1 '11 at 9:18

1

Re: まで: Concurring with flamingspinach, the point indicated by まで is not necessarily the final destination: 東京駅まで電車で行って、地下鉄に乗り換えた。. Also, when showing a destination in this manner, まで is better for action verbs such as 歩く, 走る, 泳ぐ, etc. (駅まで走る rather than 駅に走る or 駅へ走る.)
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Derek SchaabJun 6 '11 at 19:03

There is a very subtle difference between the two--with に, the destination is more important; with へ, the journey is more important. You might use に if you want to say you're going "to the store" and へ if you want to say you're going "in the direction of the store [and ending up there]."

Is there a lot of practical difference in how they are used? Not really.

I've always seen に as meaning going somewhere directly without any intention of stopping, whereas へ shows that they are going that way, but if they see something interesting they may stop or make a detour.

which shows how each dialect used different particle to say 北海道○行く around that time. 京 is for Kyoto, 筑紫(つくし) is Kyushu and 坂東 is Kanto/Tohoku.

Being just a layperson on Japanese linguistics, I'll just stop here, but I'm sure a more learned person will have a lot to say about why the place of に and へ are different between the two quotes above, and how these regional differences came about.

Not relevant to the topic of the question, but: in the last example, a more natural sentence is 郵便局の方へ３００メートル歩くと、中学が右に見えます。 (1) 歩いて is unnatural in this sentence and should be 歩くと, but I cannot explain why. (2) 歩く is usually written with kanji unless it is written for foreign speakers and/or small kids who do not read kanji, in which case 郵便局 should be avoided first.
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Tsuyoshi ItoJun 5 '11 at 22:42